'Be prepared' is most famous as the motto of the Scouts, but it's a maxim that is equally as embraced by ballet dancers.

A dancer's ballet bag is an essential bit of kit that they take with them wherever they go – in rehearsals, during breaks and in their dressing rooms; it's always to hand. But what do they contain? We asked two Royal Ballet dancers – Marianela Nuñez and Yasmine Naghdi – what their ballet bag essentials are:

Marianela Nuñez

Pointe shoes: 'Perhaps the most obvious thing to feature in a ballet bag, but I have two new pairs and two worn ones. As well as stage rehearsals, I use pointes for centre work in class. We have to sew our own pointe shoes and I can get through three pairs per performance.'

Flat shoes: 'These are the first pair I put on each day, in preparation for barre work in morning class.'

My 'toe bag': 'It's a funny name, but this little bag has all the things I need to take care of my feet. I see a chiropodist once a month as I'm susceptible to corns, which can be very painful. The bag contains corn and callous removal liquid as well as scissors and protective tape.'

A massage ball and foot roller: 'Both of these are used to release tight and uncomfortable muscles. The massage ball looks like a cricket ball. I bought it from a pet shop! Thiago [Soares, Marianela's husband and also a Principal with The Royal Ballet] tends to use these too – he has a habit of squirreling his own stuff into my ballet bag and having me carry his stuff!'

A small cosmetics bag: 'This has all the essentials – a hair brush, Vaseline, a nail file and hair grips.'

A small box of resin: 'We put this on our shoes to help with grip.'

Spare ballet skirts: 'I carry different colours and styles of clothing to wear when rehearsing different ballets – some ballets require freer movement than others.'

Socks: ‘Spare pairs of socks are essential when you’re on your feet all day.’

iPhone with plenty of music downloaded: 'Though we're listening to music all day through rehearsals and performances, you'll always see dancers during breaks with their earphones in. Every dancer has their own playlist of favourite songs to help them relax.'

Yasmine Naghdi

Shoes: 'One new pair of pointe shoes and three older pairs to wear during rehearsals, one pair of flats for barre or any role I am rehearsing in flat shoes. I also carry a pair of socks as I often wear them during barre exercises to really engage my feet.'

Legwarmers and spare clothing: 'Essential for keeping muscles warm and avoiding injury. I also have one long skirt, one short skirt, three pairs of shorts (depending which ballet I'm working on) and a spare leotard.'

Foot protection: 'A bag containing things I need to protect my feet whilst in pointe shoes such as toe pads, toe dividers, plasters, tape, animal wool and water spray to soften down the hard vamp [the lower forward part of the shoe's upper] on new pointe shoes.'

L'Occitane Almond Lighter Legs: 'I use it daily straight after rehearsals and when I'm preparing for an evening performance. It's really effective in relieving tired legs.'

A small sewing bag: 'This is filled with threaded needles, different colours of thread and scissors in case the ribbons or elastics of my pointe shoes come loose.'

Snacks and refreshment: 'I always have a bottle of water, energizing, nutritious snacks and a bag of mixed nuts and dried fruits to sustain my energy. I usually eat them before or after our lunch break.'

To highlight the campaign, we've collected the pointe shoes that the Company get through in a week. These are on display in a box in the foyer by the ROH Box Office and are taller than each of the dancers who are fronting this year's appeal - Francesca Hayward, Marcelino Sambé and Yasmine Naghdi!

As well as winning tickets to the rehearsal event, the competition winner and their guest will receive a backstage tour and tea and cake.

How to enter

To enter the competition, tell us how many shoes you think are in the box and share a picture of it on Twitter or Instagram, using the tag #PointesWinPrizes. If you're not on social media, you can have a guess in person and post it into the pointe shoe tower.

The deadline for entries will be 21 April 2014. The winner will be selected at random from all correct entries received.

Those who additionally make a donation to the Pointe Shoe Appeal online will also be entered into a draw to win a pair of pointe shoes signed by Francesca Hayward.

Terms and conditions of entry: The prize is a pair of tickets to see a Royal Ballet in Rehearsal Insights Event on 24 April 2014 at 7.30pm. The prize is as stated and there is no cash alternative nor is it transferable. All entries must be received by 21 April and the winner will be selected at random from all correct entries received. The Royal Opera House’s decision is final in all matters. Tickets on the 24 April are subject to availability and winning tickets must be claimed by 23 April.

To promote the appeal, Francesca wore a camera on her ankle, capturing a sense of The Royal Ballet from the perspective of a pointe shoe – from preparation, to morning class, to evening performance.

‘Shoes aren’t talked about a lot, but they are where everything starts for a dancer', says Marcelino. ‘You and the shoe warm up together in morning class as the shoe moulds to your foot. Your shoe is part of your skin and you can tell immediately if there is something wrong. It really does need to be the perfect fit.’

‘You can’t do a step without your shoes’, adds Francesca. ‘We are so lucky to have access to such an incredible shoe department.’

All of the shoes worn by The Royal Ballet are by necessity custom-made and specific to the requirements of each individual dancer. Jane Latimer, Ballet Shoe Manager, describes it as a partnership between the dancers and the shoe room: ‘The pointe shoes are not churned out of a machine. You have people in a workroom making each pair, and the dancers get very used to a particular maker. In the Ballet Shoe Room, we try to procure the best shoes we possibly can for them.’ Watch how ballet pointe shoes are made.

Pointe shoes cost The Royal Ballet over £250,000 a year. ‘When I was dancing Clara in The Nutcracker– constantly running and always on pointe – I got through two pairs of pointe shoes a day’, says Francesca.

In addition to pointe shoes, calf-length boots feature in a lot of costumes for male dancers. ‘Boots can be a dancer’s best friend’, says Marcelino. ‘It is a long process to soften the leather, and in the first rehearsals they can feel awful, but by the third show, they feel great.’ Find out more about ballet boots.

Francesca recently made her role debut in Frederick Ashton’s Rhapsody. She trained at The Royal Ballet School from the age of 11 and joined the Company in 2011. ‘It is a real honour to be here’, she says. ‘There are some of the world’s best dancers warming up next to you on the barre in morning class, and it is amazing when you are dancing on stage to think about who has danced there before you. Performing as Clara was surreal as The Nutcracker was one of the reasons I got into ballet – I used to watch it in my living room every day!’

Marcelino, who also trained at The Royal Ballet School, joined the company in 2012. Last Season he performed as the Bronze Idol in La Bayadère, a role that involves being painted top to toe in gold paint. ‘I loved performing the Bronze Idol – it is a very technical role and so it was rewarding when all of the hard work from school came together’, he says. ‘Working with the best people in the world is also really special. There is such a variety of culture and art all around you, and you feel part of a big family.’

To contribute to the annual cost of ballet footwear and support The Royal Ballet today, please make a donation online or phone Sacha Glasgow-Smith on +44 (0)20 7212 9510.

Footwear is essential to ballet, enabling our dancers to give their best performances. Each Season our Royal Ballet dancers use about 12,000 pairs of shoes. Combined with the character shoes, elastic, ribbons and detailing relevant to each production, the total cost for footwear is over £250,000 a year. The Pointe Shoe Appeal underpins the work of the Company by helping to fund the essential costs of ballet shoes.

We will be fully launching the appeal next year, but donations are very gratefully received at any point during the Season. The main focus of the campaign will be in 2014 but donations are gratefully received at any point during the Season.

Mara Galeazzi and Edward Watson, The Royal Ballet Principals fronting this year's Pointe Shoe Appeal, recently took time out of rehearsals to explain the importance of footwear in ballet.

'Our shoes are so important to us,' says Edward, ' You have to feel like you're in the right shoes - sometimes if I'm wearing the wrong shoes it's like I've got someone else's legs on - it's a really odd feeling!'

All the shoes worn by The Royal Ballet are handmade and many of the dancers have their shoes custom-made by one shoemaker throughout their career, such are the precise demands of the art form. Jane Latimer from the Pointe Shoes Room explains: 'Mara, until recently, has been completely reliant on Bob Martin who made her shoes from the moment she came into the Company. It was a terrible day when Bob retired because the dancers get very used to their particular maker'

That said, he did make a huge surplus for Mara and she will be dancing out her Royal Ballet career in his Innovation shoes. You can win one of the two pairs she wears in her final performance by making a donation, of any size, to the appeal.

It’s one of the best-loved scenes in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: the meeting of Alice and the hookah smoking Caterpillar. After his solo, backed by Arabian princesses, the caterpillar departs the stage with parasol in hand, followed by a trail of legs in perfect unison. 16 legs with 16 feet, all wearing the most beautiful, royal blue, crystal-encrusted pointe shoes. It’s a moment audiences love but behind it lies a huge amount of effort.

Each blue shoe belongs to one of eight dancers: either members of The Royal Ballet Company or Royal Ballet School students. Each individual pair is prepared by one of the two members of staff working in the Ballet Shoe Room. Máire first has to fit the shoes, before dying them an exact shade of royal blue. Blue ribbons are then attached before each shoe is hand-encrusted with crystals. It takes about a day to prepare each pair of shoes, and these are just eight of the thousands (approximately 6,000) pairs of pointes Máire has to make sure are available to the Company throughout the Season

Every Season we spend over £250,000 on ballet footwear, so every donation made to our annual Pointe Shoes Appeal makes a real difference. A pair of pointe shoes costs £39.

It’s a staggering ballet fact that between rehearsals and 19 performances, this Season’s Nutcracker requires over 900 pairs of pointe shoes to stage. On top of that, 122 pairs are needed for children, with some children requiring more than one pair to perform several roles Character artists, actresses, actors and Royal Ballet School students scuff up a further 120 pairs.

Whether it is meticulously-prepared pointe shoes for the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Snowflakes, or the party shoes worn by the children in the opening scene, these details are all part of delivering the production perfectly each time.

Though many of these shoes will be worn for other production rehearsals or recycled for use by ballet students, the reality is that a pair of pointe shoes costs £36, and over the course of the Season, across all our productions, the cost of meeting footwear needs of The Royal Ballet costs over £250,000. We're very grateful for the support of our audiences year round and wondered if you would consider giving The Royal Ballet a small Christmas gift.

Just £5 pays for the thick supportive elastic that the ballerinas require to secure their pointe shoes, or £18 buys us a single pointe shoe.

Whatever the size of gift, it would make a very practical difference to us as we prepare and perform this magical Christmas production. Make a donation.

Royal Ballet dancers can get through up to six pairs of pointe shoes a week. That’s a lot of shoes, most of them made by Freed of London, a major supplier of custom-made pointe shoes to the world’s top ballet dancers.

We recently took Royal Ballet First Artists Leanne Cope and Nathalie Harrison to Freed’s factory in East London for a behind-the-scenes insight into how this most vital tool of a dancer’s profession are made. They also had a chance to meet those who hand-make up to 40 pairs of shoes a day to dancers’ individual specifications.

With shoes costing the company £250,000 each season - at £216 a week for a busy dancer - the Royal Opera House runs an annual Pointe Shoe Appeal to raise funds. The face of this year’s appeal is Principal Lauren Cuthbertson, who recently re-opened the Freed shop in St Martin’s Lane, London.

Royal Ballet Principal dancer Lauren Cuthbertson this week re-opened the refurbished St Martin's Lane shop of Freed of London, a major supplier of custom-made pointe shoes to The Royal Ballet.

The company was founded in 1929 by cobbler Frederick Freed, whose workshop was in the basement of a shop on St Martins Lane. It is now the leading producer of pointe shoes in the world. Lauren has worn Freed shoes for 17 years, since she was a pupil at the Royal Ballet School.

The company's ballet shoe makers know the feet of the dancers intimately, handcrafting each shoe with painstaking detail according to dancer’s individual specifications. Royal Ballet Principal dancers get through up to six pairs of ballet shoes per week, and each year The Royal Ballet spends some £250,000 on shoes.

It’s not only members of the Royal Ballet who wear Freed shoes. Every year, 150 children from Lambeth and Southwark have free weekly dance lessons as part of the flagship Chance to Dance education programme. All the children wear shoes provided at no cost by Freed, who also support the programme’s end of year performance, when the children have the opportunity to perform at the Royal Opera House.